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Josh Carlson

@CjMalone Someone needs to tell them about osm2pgsql, Pythonning your way through shapefiles doesn't sound like much fun...

5 comments
CJ Malone

@jcarlson we need to improve the way people access our data. Asking people to download the planet (or an extract) is quite a challenge, before anything else

Josh Carlson

@CjMalone

I would personally find it less challenging than using the OSM API to bring OSM tags back into a shapefile and dumping it to ArcGIS Online.

But yeah, it's not like either option is super user-friendly.

CJ Malone

@jcarlson I hadn't realised how nerfed the shapefile is. Using it seems like a mistake.

But even asking people to do the pbf is going to discourage a lot of people.

Josh Carlson

@CjMalone

There are a few "easier" options I've seen out there, where you basically just edit a config file, and click "run".

But step 1 is usually something like "pull this Docker image" or "clone this git repo", which is an automatic turnoff for a lot of folks.

I do think there's some value in the model Esri's followed on this. They have an osm2pgsql service running updates at 15-minute intervals, and they make access to those services open to anyone.

Josh Carlson

@CjMalone

Those specific services don't have the specialized fields that Utah needs.

I like to imagine if a wider group of organizations could coalesce around a schema and a geographic area of interest, maybe they could collectively support a shared instance.

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